Curriculum: Art & Play, Movement & Rhythm
Every morning, your child will take part in a special group activity called circle time. Here, our fairy tale program teachers use gestures in song, verse, games, and poems to help develop your child’s motor skills, and provide the experience of expansive and contractive movement to encourage healthy growth and development.
Teaching through storytelling
In the first seven years of life, your child is at one with their surroundings, is interested and feels a part of the natural world. This is a time when your child learns best through imitation and play rather than instruction.
Self-directed play is the work of the young child
We provide a play environment with simple and open-ended toys made from natural materials – wool, silk, wood, cotton and other things found in nature – so that your child is free to create their own world by imitating life.
Imagination is a foundation for creative thinking in later life
As your child plays and learns to grow in their imagination, they develop tolerance and social skills, fine and gross motor skills, independence, the use of language, and divergent thinking, which are the foundations for problem solving. Your child will digest their experience of the world, recapture it in play and, in later years, transform it into focused creative and academic work.
Connecting through circle time
At Lotus Bloom school, your child will listen to stories everyday. Storytelling is an integral part of teaching in our school. Understanding and decoding speech comes before reading and writing. By listening to the rich language of stories told, your child will develop their language and vocabulary ready for the Grade School years. Repetitive storytelling helps to build up memory forces, pictorial feeling, and imaginative thinking.
Our fairy tale program teachers will provide your child with the rich experiences of circle time, free play, storytelling, and the following activities:
- Artistic – painting, drawing, beeswax modeling and crafts
- Practical – sewing, handwork, gardening
- Domestic – food preparation (chopping, cutting, mixing, pouring, stirring, measuring, grating), making and baking bread
- Outside play – a time for the children to experience the elements – sun, rain, warmth, cold – and run, jump, skip, climb and swing.
Signs that show your child is ready for Lotus Bloom school’s Early Childhood programme
- Ability to go to the bathroom independently and dress for outdoor playtime
- Interest and growing ability to imitate teachers’ gestures
- Growing ability to participate in adult-accompanied purposeful work
- Interest and growing ability to follow along orally in song and verse
- Growing ability to care for and develop proper use of artistic materials
- Growing ability to move body in space with increasing control and confidence
- Ability to play independently and a growing ability to play socially